I had considered waiting until the end of the Fourth Knight Brigade arc (which constitutes the second original novel) to do another review, but since the arc surprisingly looks to be stretching into episode 8 and there’s plenty enough to talking about already, covering just these three episodes will be fine.
Like with episodes 2-4, this span of episodes gives an excellent view of both the sillier and more sincere sides of the story, as well as expanding on some world-building bits brought up earlier. Fia’s encounter with Charlotte, the young Saint, provides her first true interaction with Saints of the modern era; previously, she had only seen them at a distance. Charlotte is apparently too young and inexperienced to have developed any of the haughtiness seen in other Saints shown so far, so of course Fia is able to befriend her quite easily. And as much as Fia might try to play off the creating the healing spring was all Charlotte, their encounters in episodes 5 and 6 indicate that the girl is fully convinced that she’s dealing with someone extraordinary to be a powerful saint here, but who, for whatever reason, doesn’t want that known. She’s probably a safer person for Fia to risk exposing her true power to than most, though, since Charlotte isn’t going to reveal Fia’s secret.
But as the next scene shows, Charlotte isn’t the only one who can sense that Fia is greater than she lets on. At least this one isn’t on Fia being careless.; Quentin, the Fourth Knight Brigade’s captain, can instinctively gauge the strength of a monster’s aura, so he recognizes the disguised Zavilia for what he really is on site and is all-too-aware of how powerful Fia actually is, even if he doesn’t fully understand why she’s that way. Japanese VA Tomokazu Sugita (the voice of Rudeus’s original incarnation in Mushoku Tensei) does a fantastic job playing up the very flustered Quentin, who has to deal with the monstrosities before him, innocent actions by Fia that he can’t help but interpret as some kind of test, and the general chaos going on in his office when Cyril shows up to intimidate Gideon and pretend that he didn’t break Quentin’s table.
Fia’s encounter with Quentin does at least allow for an explanation about the state of the line around her wrist indicating her pact with Zavilia: though tougher monsters typically generate thicker or more elaborate marks as an indication of an intense struggle to take control of the monster, a thin line doesn’t necessarily mean the tamed monster was weak; it can also mean that the pact-making was effortless because the monster readily submitted. Gideon, a vice-captain of the Monster Tamer Brigade, not seeming to know that suggests that a pact made so easily must be an extreme rarity. Zavilia’s conversation with Quentin in episode 6 allows for some of this block of episodes’ best comedy moments, but it also clarifies better the full extent of Zavilia’s connection to Fia.
The silliness continues into the Captain’s meeting, where we get an introduction to the only female Knight Captain, the alluring Clarissa Abernathy, whose Fifth Knight Brigade is in charge of the capital’s security.
Calling her the Pink Praying Mantis and regarding her with suspicion does seem a bit sexist at first, but given her brief comments to Fia about the way three of the Captains seem to be acting oddly concerning Fia, her reputation as a troublemaker may not be unwarranted. Unlike the other captains introduced so far, though, she doesn’t have a significant role in the story at this point, so this is likely her only appearance this season.
The fun continues with Zavilia allowing his possessive side to show (Quentin may not have been exaggerating in his panic over Zavilia after all1) and Fia again unwittingly getting more attention than she wants (this time from all of the familiars) for healing the familiars. This isn’t the last time, either, as episode 7 shows with the battle against the dangerous Dream Bird during the mission to “convince” the black dragon to return to his nest. At least this time she’s less conspicuous about her magic use, though she does once again take charge of the battle scenario like she’s a captain herself; that isn’t going to be lost on anyone present, and now Captain Zackery is getting drawn into this, too.
But the bigger and more important part of episode 7 – and the reason why this arc doesn’t finish in this episode – is the lengthy flashback showing Zavilia’s history. This was originally told as a side story which comes up just before Fia and crew go on their forest excursion, but for dramatic effect it does fit better where it is in the anime even though I’m not a fan of how flashbacks timed this way can disrupt the dramatic flow. This is a necessary flashback, though, as until this point Zavilia’s logic for being so adoring of Fia has seemed a little weak. It clarifies that Zavilia, for all his long previous lives and the power he eventually achieved, has spent most of that time alone, with a strong implication that he wasn’t happy about being alone. Why he has latched onto Fia so hard, and why he’s getting so possessive of her, makes a lot more sense with this factored in, as will his actions that will probably start next episode. He did ask Fia in episode 4 if she wanted him to be a king, and this encounter with the blue dragons may give him the impetus to go ahead and pursue that goal.
As always, the animation through these episodes in action scenes is still nothing special, but this remains a generally good-looking series, especially on the character design front. The portrait of the Great Saint in the Church that Charlotte refers to is also a highlight:
The current arc will conclude with next episode – in fact, it may not even take the whole episode, so we’ll see soon what Zavilia chooses to do and how that affects everything.
